


Doctor

by ZenyZootSuit



Series: Kingdom As I See It [4]
Category: Kingdom Netflix, 킹덤 | Kingdom (TV 2019)
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Illnesses, Injury, Kingdom Weekly, Natural Disasters, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24472552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenyZootSuit/pseuds/ZenyZootSuit
Summary: How was it, exactly, that Seo-bi came to be the woman she was?
Series: Kingdom As I See It [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740082
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> A homi is a hand tool used for farming
> 
> Written for Kingdom Weekly's prompt: children
> 
> Loosely based off of a friend of mine's reason for studying medicine

*******

The monster plague may have been the worst plague Seo-bi had seen, but it was not the first. Nor, she feared, would it be the last.

*******

When Seo-bi was five years old, smallpox had come to her tiny village near the sea and her people dropped like flies around her.

Her mother and brother were among them.

“Do something!” she could remember begging her father.

When he answered, his voice was grave and ridden with grief. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“There has to be something!” When he ignored her, she tugged on his sleeve and begged, stammering through her tears. “The-the neighbors said s-something about…about a doctor—“

Her father rounded on her, jerking his sleeve out of her tiny hands. “The nearest doctor is tens of miles away!” he shouted, tears in his eyes. “And even if he wasn’t, no doctor can help us now. Only the gods can help us, and they are not listening.”

At five years old, Seo-bi had the funeral rites memorized.

*******

At eight years old, her village flooded.

It was as if the sea rose up around them and swallowed them whole without an ounce of warning. Her father had only recently taught her how to swim, but even at eight she could understand that the only reason they had lived was because he had taken her inland to the woods to look for food and there the flooding had not been as bad.

Shivering and damp from the cold, she watched as people pounded on the backs of others, desperately screaming at them to _breathe, breathe_!

Few did.

In the weeks that followed as they rebuilt their village and their lives, Seo-bi watched further as so many who had initially survived coughed and coughed, the deep and horrible sound reverberating in their chests as their skin turned sallow and the light fled from their eyes.

Weeks after the flood, so many more still died of it.

*******

When Seo-bi was nine years old, her father died in a farming accident.

No one was entirely sure how it had happened that a _homi_ had been shoved through her father’s thigh and ripped out again (more than a few suspected foul play), but it had happened. That was the only thing that mattered to Seo-bi, who stood nearby as her fellow villagers tried desperately to stop the bleeding.

She begged them to save him, to do _something_.

He was all she had left…

In the end, they took ropes and tied them tightly around his leg above the wound, pulling hard until the bleeding stopped and leaving them tied until they could get him back to the village to bandage the wound. In the days that followed, Seo-bi watched the leg turn all kinds of strange colors, and too she followed the red lines that snaked up her father’s skin from the wound, ever closer to his heart.

Helplessly she wiped away the sweat pouring off him and sang to him, reminding him “Papa, it’s Seo-bi” when he forgot, his eyes cloudy and far away.

Within a week, she was standing with her neighbors at her father’s funeral.

Bowing to his memorial, she thought to herself, _Enough of this._

Her neighbor and his wife pleaded with her not to go as she packed what little she owned in a small sack and prepared to leave.

“No!” she shouted, tears in her eyes. “I can’t watch anyone else die while we sit here helplessly!”

“I’ll come back,” she promised them. “I will study hard and I will learn and when I come back, no one here will ever die again!”

When they tried to stop her, she ran.

For weeks she wandered the roads, asking everyone she saw “Where is the nearest doctor?”

In hindsight, it was a miracle she wasn’t kidnapped or killed.

Finally, someone pointed her just up the road.

“A place called Jiyulheon,” the man said. “Physician Lee is the doctor there.”

Despite the exhaustion and hunger weighing down her steps, she ran the rest of the way. 

Physician Lee was an older man with a greying beard and tired but kind eyes.

“Hello my dear,” he said gently. “What can I do for you?”

To this day, See-bi could remember how she had stood up as straight as she could while maintaining her respectful posture, hands clasped tightly in front of her.

She had never been more sure of herself when she said, “I would like to become a physician.”

The old doctor had regarded her carefully for a long moment. "It is not easy work, neither on the body nor the mind. You will have to study hard and for a long time, and there will be much you will be forced to sacrifice. If you take this road, you will never be the same."

"I understand."

"Look at me, child."

She did.

"I can see you have come a long way. All the same, are you certain this is what you want?"

She looked him in the eye. "Yes."

*******

To this day, despite everything she had seen and everything she had sacrificed, she did not regret her decision.

El Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading this little drabble! Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think!


End file.
